Pending home sales in Snohomish County rose dramatically in June, prompting at least one industry leader to suggest the region’s housing industry may be rebounding.
“It feels like we have hit the bottom of the market,” Lennox Scott, the CEO of John L. Scott Real Estate, said Wednesday.
Pending sales rose strongly in much of Western Washington, the main service area of the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. In the county, they were up 56 percent last month in comparison to June 2010, the service reported Wednesday.
Completed sales in June were down, but only slightly. There were 866 homes sold in the county last month compared to 898 a year ago, a 3.6 percent drop.
While sales appeared to be leveling off, prices continued to fall as foreclosed homes and short sales continued to load the local market.
The combined median price for single-family homes and condominiums in the county in June was $239,925, a 10.4 percent drop from a year ago. In June 2010, the median was $267,750.
For single-family homes alone, the median price was $250,000 last month, down from $279,500 last year. For condos, the median was $159,900 in June, down from $225,000 a year ago.
With prices so low, people who didn’t have to sell their homes kept them off the market. There were 4,548 homes listed in the county in June, a 22 percent drop from homes available a year ago.
The listing service quoted a report from CoreLogic Inc., a California firm that analyzes home prices. CoreLogic reported that Seattle area prices had fallen by 5.8 percent year over year, suggesting the drop would have been just 1.75 percent in King and Snohomish counties when distresses sales (foreclosures and short sales) were excluded.
Meribeth Hutchings, the broker and owner of Windermere Real Estate in Lake Stevens, said buyers are out looking for homes but are expecting good values.
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